Music saved me
Learning music and the violin has saved my soul.
For about four or five years I have been learning to play the violin, studying with both Jacqueline Burke and Patrick rafter (Co.Kilkenny),
it is just one of the best things I ever decided to do and during these times it has lifted me so many times I cannot count.
I find when I am playing I only think about the tune that I am trying to learn, that’s it nothing else. For an hour the devil of the world and its news are behind me and after, well I just don’t care about them that much.
Nigel
Frozen in the irish landscape
It has been sometime since my last post on this site and too long for my own good.
My photography however has not stopped in any shape or form; I have been working with many customers on their weddings and family images and still building up my landscape work.
For many living in Ireland the last four years it has been a difficult time and none of it down to any personal issues. It’s very easy during the times we live in to be moved from the direction you should be pointing in and to go down another path altogether. For me I don’t think I went down any other path at all be just found that I was heading in the same direction but much more slowly than before. Frozen out by concern as to what direction we all have been heading in and also a little swamped by all the bad news we have been getting almost every day for about four years. Since the new year I haven’t listen to any news at all since I don’t see the advantage to me personally anymore. All I need to know is what I am doing to get back on track.
Then something came to me that has actually been under my nose all the time. I have been working for a customer for sometime who has a large collection of art work going back to the 1940’s. This collection is nationally very important and needed to be photographed in order to produce an archive.
The amount of work produced during the life time of this artist is amazing and must amount to two or three items per day for many years.
Through the life time of this collection of work, day in day out this artist kept on working, no guarantee that any of this work was going to sell and indeed most didn’t otherwise I would not have anything to photograph. He took no shortcuts and no easy route to go and had no cast iron guarantee it was going to result in anything at all.
What he didn’t do however was to allow himself to be become frozen, stuck and distracted by anything.
So I guess all we can do is join this example, cut out the bad news and get back on track and see where we are all heading.
Don Mescall
Portrait of Don Mescall, Nigel Borrington
I have just completed some portrait images for Kilkenny based singer songwriter : Don Mescall.
Working on location in Callan, Co Kilkenny this was a great shoot and I think we have some very good images.
The following text is from Dons own web pages:
Don Mescall –
In his native country of Ireland, the name of Co. Limerick’s Don Mescall is synonymous with acoustic music of the highest order and deepest emotional depths, playing sell out shows to audiences who know what they’re letting themselves in for and keep coming back for more. His singles, “Trouble Is” and “Left in L.A.”, from debut album “Innocent Run”, are A-list favourites on Irish radio stations, and as a regular on The Late Late Show, Pat Kenny’s radio show and Ireland AM-TV shows, Don continues to play live throughout Ireland and the UK.
In describing Mescall’s music, the press typically makes reference to the styles of classic artists such as Paul Simon, Jackson Browne or a laid-back Springsteen, whilst the fresher-faced draw somewhat clichéd parallels to hugely successful contemporary singer/songwriters, the likes of David Gray and fellow Irishman, Damien Rice.
Since releasing his debut album “Innocent Run” in 2006, Don’s reputation as a songwriter has sky-rocketed with his songs being snapped up by a diverse range of top pop, country, folk and even classical artists and reaching the top of the charts on international shores.
Just a few of the stars who have enjoyed hits with Mescall’s songs are Rascal Flatts (a band described as “bigger than U2 in America”), Boyzone, The Backstreet Boys, Canadian Idol winner Theo Thams, Canada’s No 1 male artist Garou, the hugely successful American Idol contestant, Clay Aiken, Woodstock’s legendary Richie Havens, multi platinum artist Ronan Keating, new Irish stars The High Kings, the new Celtic Woman star Lynn Hilary, US country star Neal McCoy and Irish artist Frances Black, to name just a few.
Don also has some new songs and videos I will post a link once they are fully released.
I will also post more about this shoot soon.
Nigel
Its all in the lens
Poppies, Kells Co.Kilkenny
Nigel Borrington 2011,
Kilkenny photorgaphy series.
Enter poppies as a search word into Google images and you will get 1,230,000 image results. They must be one of the most painted and photographed flowers in world history, as such and even though I am very pleased with the resulting images I managed to achieve and return with I have another reason for posting this image.
I feel that the results in this selected image show what can be done to make good use of the effects of a shallow lens depth of field (I will return to this in many of my posts). This image is taken with an old manual focus f2.8, 80-200 lens set at f2.8 with the camera placed on a tripod to keep the framing as stable as possible (a tripod is not just useful in poor light) .
To me landscape photography is not just about sweeping landscapes set under a wide open sky, but about getting in close up and dirty, revealing every element in the landscape before us. A good use of a lenses focus depth is the top tool in any landscape photographer handbook.
As such I am putting this post into the training category as well as the image gallery, just so you know I have no intention of explaining ever single element of photography. I feel everyone can be a good photographer if they get out and start producing images. You need the time and the interest, if you don’t you won’t, why would you.
One thing you do need is a camera that lets you take full control, ask your camera shop to show you a camera that can. Even some of the most basic compact cameras these days will let you do this so you don’t need to spend over the odds.
Not every Camera you can buy will let you do everything you want, again ask the salesman. Look at lots of images and think about what you want to do then ask for a camera that can do it!
You can also go second user but forget old film cameras you need to take lots of images to learn, why pay for doing so. Film is well dead! Another photographer said to me, about four years ago that there must be millions of old film cameras on the second hand marked. Good Hard-core and Land-fill I am afraid my friend.
Digital is over fifteen years old even in the professional market, Film had its day – it’s over and limited to the hard of letting go or the sad old retro lovers (Hands up!).
Some professional digital cameras are now classics!
So get out there and see for yourself what your lens can do, put your camera on a tripod in front of any object you find interesting. Once you have the image framed take one shot for every aperture your lens has, once you’re back in front of your pc (or your images have been printed, God help us!) you will be able to see the effects you created for yourself.
Get creative it’s the only way to learn anything!
Nigel
Nigel Borrington 
Real world photography
So this photography thing then, what’s it all about?
If someone asks me what my favorite form of photography is and people do ask, I don’t always have an answer at hand. I feel that a camera can be used in so many different ways that it’s almost impossible to narrow things down.
I also think that overtime my choice of photography has evolved, it’s not the same now as it was when I was 25.
However if someone asked me today what my least favourite form of photography is I would have to answer, anything that’s not real. I feel that life in a small town like Kilkenny, Ireland is a little more limited in what people do and what they dress like.Even so I feel that photography should reflect the world around us all and that anything that is created outside of this world is faked.
So I guess the answer to what my most liked form of photography is, is anything that truly depicts and reflects the real world around us.
Some photographers pay to dress models in make-up and clothes that they would never dress in and live real lives in. Now, like I say this may have not been what I would have said at 25 years of age but it is what I feel today.
The world around us, is based on “what you see is what you get” and what you get may sometime appear to be a little ordinary but that’s what it is, it is ordinary. I think that the skill of any visual medium, when used correctly is to show you something a little different that you didn’t see first time.
My camera is for the real world not a fake one, one that only make-up can produce.
So then (Street, Landscape, Wedding and Sport photography) anything that really happens and people really do.
Gallery:
Kilkenny photographer: Nigel Borrington
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February 20, 2013 | Categories: About Nigel Borrington, Comment, introductions, Nigel Borrington | Tags: Kikenny photographer, Kilkenny, Kilkenny photography, Nigel Borrington | 1 Comment